


we're a different kind of same

by brokentombstone



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Canon - Book, F/M, girl in grey on a dying horse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23325049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokentombstone/pseuds/brokentombstone
Summary: "I have seen your sister in my fires, fleeing from this marriage they have made for her. A girl in grey on a dying horse, I have seen it plain as day. It has not happened yet, but it will”Or;Sansa flees the Vale. Jon retakes Winterfell. When they meet again, they are changed.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 19
Kudos: 133





	we're a different kind of same

**Author's Note:**

> There is book and show canon here, a mix of them both. There may be inconsistencies. I don't think this is necessarily 'mature' but there are darker themes I guess.

In the end, nobody comes for her. No hero comes to save Sansa from the Vale, oh no she learned a long time ago that girls like her don’t have heroes dashing in to save them. She should be so lucky. No, but in the end Sansa comes for him. 

Half out of her mind, practically a pile of bones from starving for weeks on the road and wrought with dehydration. Covered in dirt and hair full of brambles. Shivering from the cold. But oh she comes. Just a girl in a tarnished dress and travelling cloak too thin for the winds of winter howling around her. She thinks they were white when she fled but they’re tarnished and stained grey by the time she makes it to Winterfell. She feels the tears bubbling up in her when she reaches the walls of Winterfell. She comes to a full stop and thinks she must be dreaming like she has for weeks and weeks now. 

But in the distance she sees the flag of the Direwolf flying and she knows it in her bones. She’s not dreaming this time. 

The guards make their way towards her and she practically falls off her horse. They’re there in a moment, catching her and questioning who she is. 

She rasps out, barely above a whisper, “Alayne—No, no. Sansa, I am Sansa Stark.”

Her vision is going a bit blurry yet she can tell that the men think her deranged, peasant girl on the brink of collapse from starving in some hovel, hoping for a warm meal in coming to Winterfell and claiming to be a Stark. It’s inconceivable, but Sansa has long since grown accustomed to the unbelievable. 

They don’t question her, but support her into the courtyard. One of them going to usher her horse as well, maybe they can save him, even if she were to perish. Oh, what a cruel irony that would be Sansa thinks, to make it all the way here but too ill to survive while her horse is nursed back to health, a remnant of the girl she once was. 

Sansa lifts her head, garnering all their energy and stares around at the castle she once called home. The courtyard is so familiar to her and it seems to give her a small reprieve of energy. She doesn’t lean as heavily on the guards as she did a moment ago. 

She looks, everywhere. Sees men practicing sparring. Moving tools and barrels from one area to another. All around her men are bustling and it reminds her of her childhood when Ned and Catelyn Stark ruled and before her very person was ripped from her chest and destroyed in the name of a war she had no part in. 

And then her eyes fall on the staircase up to the walking deck that encircles the courtyard. 

Jon.

He’s frozen, in shock she thinks. He’s older, but she supposes she is too. And there is something wild about him. Something a bit haunted. She supposes that fits too, she knows all about being haunted. Despite her exhaustion she straightens herself, releasing herself fully from the grips of the guards and moves to take a step toward him. 

But before she can, he is crashing down the stairs, sweeping across the courtyard and pulling her into his arms. There is so much in that embrace. The regret of Robb, never able to save her from the Lion’s den. The innocence of Bran and Rickon, betrayed by a boy too young to play at war. The mischief of Arya, escaping into the ether, and as lost to them as their brothers are now. Even their father’s head rolling across Joffrey’s feet, bitter on her tongue so many years later. And just a tinge of resentment, from Sansa’s mother Catelyn (throat sliced to the bone), the things she had held against Jon, no fault of his own. And Sanas revels in it. In this singular moment between the last of the Starks. The only two direwolves of Winterfell, finding each other in a snow covered castle, broken and bent, but for one moment together again. 

She hears Jon deep in her ear, “Sansa… You’re alive,” It’s not relief, she knows. It’s almost a mantra, like he doesn’t believe it himself. He realizes all she has gone through to get here in a single instant, and it wounds him. His words are a promise of more to come. 

It’s the last thing she hears before her eyes close and the darkness pulls her under. 

~~~

She wakes, what feels like days later, in what must be her childhood bedroom. She feels stiff and her whole body aches, almost unfamiliar to her. And suddenly it’s all rushing back to her. Escaping the Vale, escaping Littlefinger and Harry Hardyng, their schemes and plans. Without much plan of her own. The weeks on the road splitting her body open. Spending most nights wishing death would take her after all the years of pain she had endured. 

And she had scarcely known what she was running towards. She had heard Jon’s name in the wind, whispers of a White Wolf planning to reclaim the North. To take back the castle that the Bolton’s had taken long ago. And she had hoped, with the only shred of innocence not ripped from her in King’s Landing or carved out of her with Littlefinger’s wicked words. Hoped that he had succeeded, that she was running towards something, something warm and safe and not another enemy cloaked in shadow who wanted her for nothing more than her name. 

The thoughts flood her and she remembers arriving, Jon enveloping her. It hadn’t been a dream. She was safe, alive, and whole (maybe not whole, maybe a part of her was doomed to be fractured) and more importantly she was home. She wiggles her fingers and toes, starts to stretch her limbs in the bed she had missed for years and years. And as she is making her way into a seated position she hears her door creak open. 

Jon’s eyes widen from the doorway and he pauses for a moment, suddenly unsure. But then he’s rushing in. 

“Sansa, you’re awake,” He says and pulls the chair she hadn’t noticed, up closer to her bed. Taking her hand in his own. 

Sansa wants to laugh. ‘Sansa, you’re alive,’ and ‘Sansa, you’re awake.’ Jon had never been very eloquent, but there was something in that familiarity that warmed her. And then the laugh dies in her chest and she is taken by the desperate need to cry. The rest of her family is lost to her now, he is all that remains. A wisp of familiarity that feels as distant as it is close.

A sob that sounds half like a laugh is what emerges. 

Jon looks troubled and makes to stand up, “I’ll fetch a maester right away, you must have just woken up. I was only gone a moment.”

Had he been standing vigil? Before he can get up, Sansa squeezes his hand and uses what energy she has to keep him seated. 

“Jon, wait,” She says and is relieved her voice comes out at least somewhat clear. 

And then their eyes meet. 

She drinks him in. It has been so long since she felt safe, in any way, with anybody. And with Jon, here, in her room, she feels a peace return to her that she hadn’t known since she was the innocent girl of Summer who had grown up in the shelter of her parent’s castle. It steadies her, and she feels something shifting deep inside her. Unidentifiable and a feeling she is unused to, but she thinks it’s the start of healing. 

She knows she must look a mess. Jon’s eyes are clouded with concern, and that haunted look makes him appear quite beautiful, the thought tugs at her. Jon. Beautiful. His features are drawn in tight, analyzing her. And she realizes that he must have had plenty of time to do so while she lay unconscious, but perhaps he thought that invasive. To examine her sleeping frame and see which parts of her were broken beyond repair (luckily nothing external as far as she knew, no, Sansa’s wounds were too deep for others to see).

She reaches her free hand to her hair, is comforted to feel that it hadn’t all fallen out, leaving her bald. As she had feared during her more delirious moments on that horse. 

Jon clears his throat then, but doesn’t move his hand from hers. 

“How did you do it Sansa? Where did you ride from? The maesters they weren’t sure… they said your body was shutting down from lack of food and water. We had to feed you while you slept, if you hadn’t woken—” He cuts himself off, Sansa sees the pain in his eyes. 

And she can’t help but feel how bizarre the entire situation is, the last two Stark siblings, sitting here and aching for each other’s wounds when they had been the least close all through childhood. Fate worked in funny ways she decided. She also decided that she would rather have no one else here than Jon, as odd a sentiment as it was, it was true. She felt a kinship with her half-brother, after months spent losing herself in the identity of Alayne Stone. She thought maybe she had understood him a bit better. 

When Sansa still doesn’t speak, Jon continues, “The guards, they said you called yourself Alayne. What happened Sansa?”

His voice takes on an edge that she can’t quite decipher and his hand is still gripping hers tightly. 

“Littlefinger,” She says and looks him in the eye while she continues her voice not trembling any longer, “He stole me out of the capital, the day they killed Joffrey. He hid me away in the Vale. He killed my Aunt Lysa in front of me, killed my cousin Robin with poison. He wanted to marry me to Harry Hardyng, the next heir to the Vale, but only to kill him and marry me himself. He never saw me as anything but a means to an end and a ghost of my mother. He was sick. And I escaped, came to the one place I thought I might be safe.”

All through this Jon doesn’t waver in holding her gaze. Something burns deep within her when she realizes that he sees her, all of her, and doesn’t flinch. 

“We’ll kill him. One day, I swear it to you Sansa. We owe it to them, to the ghosts of Winterfell. For Robb. For Bran and Rickon. For Arya. For father. And for your lady mother. All taken from us. It’s only us now, us to hold the North and to defeat our enemies,” He says this with such ferocity that she thinks she might cry again. 

And then he does something that takes her by surprise. He leans down and kisses her on the forehead. Just the briefest of pecks, a mere moment. But she thinks maybe it means something more. 

“Rest now,” Jon says and makes his way to the door, “I’ll go fetch the Maester to come and see you. We can talk more later.”

And then Sansa is alone in her room again, and before she knows it the darkness is pulling her under again.

~~~

Three days after she wakes for the second time she emerges from her chambers. Jon had sent one of the wives of the bannermen to help her dress and to bathe her again and help her clean her battered body. She had discovered that the woman had bathed her once during her unconsciousness the first time. Once upon a time she might have felt violated by such a notion, now she couldn’t find it in herself to care. 

She met Jon in his chambers, he had been to see her several times but she thought he seemed more distant than their first conversation. Like he was perpetually holding himself back. It plagued her. 

He was seated at his desk, writing a letter as far as she could tell. He stood and made his way to the table with two chairs when he realized she was at his door. 

But before he sat down again he seemed to notice her, his eyes couldn’t avoid her own forever. 

“You look—” Jon stammers, “well.”

Holding back. Always holding back, she thinks. She doesn’t respond but makes her way to the other chair. She does look well, she was able to check herself in a mirror and she looks more the girl she once was, she supposes the woman she now is. She finds herself surprised that Jon had even recognized her in the courtyard, body half in the grave. Face ashen with dirt and hair still half dyed with the colouring of Alayne Stone. 

“You said we had things to discuss,” She says, all formality now. All the hardness she had learned over the years seeping into her unwillingly. 

Jon holds her eye for a moment and then dives in. 

“Stannis Barathon is dead. Ramsay Bolton and his father are dead, this I assume you know as we stand in the castle they stole. I didn’t tell you about Stannis before because when you woke up the first time it was still unclear if he would survive, the Maesters tried everything they could. By the time you woke the second time he was gone. I wanted to wait as long as possible to tell you,” Jon says all of this as if reporting to her the weather. Flat. Emotionless. Except at the end, he had waited, wanting to spare her. But from what?

“And why should I care about the fate of Stannis Baratheon? The man meant nothing to me,” Sansa says, not connecting the dots. But there’s something buzzing in the back of her mind, a picture she can’t quite put together. 

“Stannis had declared himself a King. His gift to me for my assistance in taking back the North was to give me Winterfell, to make me a Lord,” Jon says and his voice hitches slightly. 

“I see,” Sansa says, revealing nothing, despite the storm swirling in her mind. 

“Sansa… I would never. Never take that from you. I told Stannis that Winterfell belonged to you. That I couldn’t take it from you, even if there was the slightest chance you lived. Even if you were all dead, the castle is not mine. It is yours by rights,” Jon says this with a kind of honesty that pains her. 

She can’t believe the years she spent thinking that Jon’s blood meant anything. Not that she had ever been truly cruel. But she could’ve been so much kinder. 

“Jon, if you had taken it… None of us would’ve held that against you. We would choose you over Ramsay Bolton every day. Of course we would,” Sansa says firmly. 

Jon nods his head, looking slightly taken aback but not willing to question her. 

“It matters not. You are here now. Winterfell is yours,” Jon says. 

And it seems too much. Too much for the weakest of the Stark children. And she can’t help but feel that way. She lacked the wildness that seemed to run through the rest of them. But somehow, somehow she had survived it all. Survived the Lannisters, the Tyrells, Littlefinger. Survived the anguish of losing one family member after the other. To be here now with Jon, knowing that they alone had survived, the bastard and the eldest daughter.

For years she had known men who only cared for her because of what she represented. The possibility of a claim, of power. Of the North. And here it was for the taking. Jon, the first man to not want her claim, to willingly give it to her. Her head spun.

“Lady of Winterfell,” She breathes. 

There is a pause, and in it Sansa feels her world splinter. What isn’t Jon telling her?

“Sansa, Stannis is dead. They don’t wish to make me a Lord any longer. They wish to make me King. King in the North,” Jon looks at her, uncertain. 

The realization washes over her. This gift Jon wishes to give her, it is too great. She didn’t win back Winterfell, Jon did that. And she recalls suddenly what Littlefinger once told her. That when she revealed her long red hair, and when she dressed in a cloak emblazoned with the Direwolf, that then every Knight in the Vale would pledge his sword to help her win back her birthright. But that hadn’t happened. No. It had been Jon who had done that, done it without even knowing she lived. Just Jon. 

“Jon, I can’t—” She starts.

He cuts her off, “Sansa, you must. You are the last true born daughter of Ned and Catelyn Stark. It is your right and your responsibility. We have won back Winterfell, now it is your duty to rule it, to rule the North. To keep us independent, as Robb wanted.”

And both their eyes are glassy at the mention of their dead brother. 

“I might fail,” Sansa says quietly. Unsure of herself after all the years spent in the shadows. Jon takes her hand. 

“You won’t,” Jon says and his face is open, “And if you do, then I shall fail with you. I won’t leave your side now. We are the North, all that is left of it.”

Sansa thinks she hears a wolf howl in the distance.

~~~

Years later, after Sansa’s coronation. After Jon convinces the Lords to crown her instead. After Daenerys Targaryen comes to Westeros and devastates a continent, after she wages war with her long hidden nephew Aegon Targaryen and they both end up dead, dying in dragon fire. After they defeat the Night King. Long after they find Littlefinger hiding deep in the Vale, knowing that they search for him. Long after Jaime Lannister kills his sister Cersei and then himself. When all the ghosts from their past are long dead. Years after all that, Jon and Sansa will wed under a weirwood tree. The blood of their birth long forgotten in favour of forging a stronger North, solidifying a throne and Kingdom for them all. (Besides, rumours of Jon’s birth had swirled for years now and the North wasn’t one to forget). But before this they will spill their secrets to one another, revealing the pain and loss they had experienced. The stories that brought them back to Winterfell. And before that though they will collide with enough force to shape the future of Westeros. No, not their reunion in Winterfell’s courtyard. Though that was fate as well. This collision was more primal.

And when Jon bit into her neck that night, she promised him that they weren’t Lannisters, that they weren’t Cersei and Jaime reborn. (She promised herself that she was no Cersei Lannister forged from snow instead of gold). But oh gods, she had felt sin that night.

And they will fight for each other, back to back as wolves do. Protecting each other’s weaknesses. Making up for what they lost over the years. Creating a new pack, building a better future. 

Bran, Rickon, and Arya never return to them. Lost somewhere along the roads winding to Winterfell. But sometimes Jon or Sansa hear a wolf howl and swear it is their siblings returning from the dead, reminding them that Winter is Coming, and that when it comes the wolves will out. 

And long after all that. Long after Jon and Sansa’s children are grown and Jon and Sansa are returned to the earth. When songs are sung about them. The story will start with this, with a girl in grey on a dying horse and a boy once dead returned from the grave to fight for his love.

**Author's Note:**

> Well this came out of nowhere. I was scrolling my tumblr and came across this post: https://sardoniyx.tumblr.com/post/179397976936/jonsansaweek-day-two-asoiaf-or-got-the-heart
> 
> I suddenly had an entire story in my head and this was the result. The girl in grey on a dying horse quote haunts me y'all, I think about it all the time, and I felt the need to get some book!jonsa out of my system. Please talk to me in the comments about this because I have thoughts.
> 
> Also at the end, I mention Aegon, I do mean book Aegon and not the ridiculous name the show gave Jon lol. 
> 
> Please drop a comment if you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.
> 
> (and yes I wrote this while intending to work on my other WIPs, sorry! they are coming, do not worry)


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